Instruments
by Nymbis
Summary: Their hands can do many things. They can heal, they can hold, and they can kill. The female warriors of Konoha aren’t very different from their tools in this respect. Kunoichi and parts of the hand.


**Instruments**

**AN: **A weird idea I got that wouldn't leave me alone. Trying it out.

---

The brush smoothes over the crystalline planes of her nails, giving them a fresh, new lacquered coat. She can safely say without any doubt that she has the most pristine, manicured fingernails out of all of the girls- civilian and kunoichi alike- within the village. They're painted a deep red in color, evenly shaped, and delicate looking. She takes great pride in her fingernails, because she's avoided having them chipped or broken even after years spent as a kunoichi. They're attractive, and they remind her that just because something appears beautiful and lovely, doesn't mean that it can't be used to draw blood. Because as aesthetically pleasing as her nails are, they are also sharper than kunai.

---

The golden band around her ring finger hasn't been there very long, but she feels like she's been long accustomed to its weight. It glints in the sunlight as she slowly pours the watering can over the flowers that have been wilting. Since her pregnancy, she's been out of work and finding herself with a lot of time for gardening. A lot of time for cooking, and cleaning and other domestic duties. Her ring finger flexes in its grip around the handle. She feels wrong in this environment, and it feels strange to have a ring around a finger that's accustomed to twirling kunai. Once, it didn't seem so strange, to have the two worlds collide, but now she finds her house so empty and her finger so heavy. She is a kunoichi, and she inwardly knows that things will get back to normal after her little girl, who will also be a kunoichi, is born. Yet, despite these assurances, there's a trace of bitterness about her, because even though she is a renowned genjutsu expert, she knows that she would have made an even better wife.

---

Her nose wrinkles in distaste every time she feels the little lump of hardened skin on the side of her middle finger, which normally happens after a long night of writing out paperwork. It _feels _ugly, and she sighs with exasperation when she thinks of all the forms she's filled out to achieve that little writer's callous. She leans back, setting the pen down and exhaling slowly. It drains a person, having to write out all of the paperwork for an entire shinobi village, but it doesn't take much to remind her why she does what she does, and why she has that lump of hardened skin on the inside of her finger. She loves someone who loved her uncle, and she is one of the few kunoichi left that still believes in loyalty and support. And while her beloved mentor doesn't need to make use of her skills in battle, she does need her skills in pragmatism, and she is happy to serve her where need be.

---

Her palms hurt very badly as the sun begins to sink in the distance, a pink sky illuminating the training grounds where she stands shoving her hands forward into a wooden training dummy repetitively. There are splinters wedged deeply into her calloused palms and she wants to whimper. The tiny, rhythmic patterns of sound continue as she keeps slamming her open palm against the unyielding opponent. Perhaps it is not improvement, but it's endurance and she is very good at that. Despite the pain, she doesn't pause to remove the splinters. Because at home they call her weak, but later when she's pulling the wooden shards out of her hardened palms she'll remind herself that she won't let herself be that way forever.

---

She loves staring at the gaps between her fingers. They make her smile because she can envision the things that would fit simply perfect between them. Like the white, silky fingers of her old sensei when making that final hand seal. She splays her fingers and smiles wickedly to herself, deciding that she has a very warped sense of humor before going to get sticks of dango to fill them instead.

---

She hates her fingers, even though they hold an incredible amount of power and versatility. She could kill a person with one finger, she could kill a _village _with one finger. She could perform complex medical procedures that would save a person's life with only one finger. She has lost horrible amounts of money by punching slot machine dials with one finger. She could start a war with one accusing finger. But she hates her fingers, because it only took her one finger to know that her precious people no longer had a pulse.

---

She hisses as she awkwardly tries to peel back the black cloth from over the curves of her knuckles, prying fabric out of blood and pus. Underneath her gloves there are huge scrapes, chunks of flesh removed from her hand after a rather rigorous amount of training. She gingerly removes the black cloth, wincing as it agitates her wounds but gritting her teeth and bearing with it. The large abrasions on her knuckles take away from the femininity that her hands are supposed to have, but as she flexes her fingers and feels the skin stretch over her knuckles, there's a smile over her grimace because this is a pain worth having. She's as strong as she is graceful and now she's getting the scars to prove it.

---

She knows the way of the sword like the back of her hand, but she would give it up in an instant to have his loving fingers covering it up instead of her ANBU protective armor.

---

No two are alike, she thinks to herself as she stares at the swirling patterns on the tips of her fingers. Each one is unique to one person. She may have the same eyes, the same bloodline, and perhaps even the same skill set as the members of her prestigous clan, but she is determined to stand above it all and to make the prints on her fingers worth remembering. Because she may not be born to lead, but she will grow to lead and that is more important.

---

Wrists are the most important thing in her specialty. The rotation, the straightness, and the force given to the wrist a weapon depended on for how far it flies, how hard it hits, and where it lands. A strong, flexible wrist is a necessity, and a weak one means death. She treasures her wrists greatly, because they are where she gets her dreams from and they hold most of her strengths. Sometimes, though, when she watches the retired shinobi tenderly rub their wrists and complain about aching joints and carpel tunnel, she feels afraid. She doesn't want that to be her. Her wrists mean everything to her, and if they were ever to fail her like they fail the other, more careless shinobi who hiss while wrapping bandages around them in a mundane effort to get them to function properly, she wouldn't just be losing her life, but her aspirations, which would be decidedly worse. She's wanted to become a strong kunoichi ever since she was a little girl, and those wrists are used to fire the weapons she's built her dreams upon. Nothing can take that away. Because without them she is nothing she'd ever want to be.


End file.
